I said, "For roses, chickens, bees and turpentine?"
He hesitated, and then said, "Well, yes," and rubbed his head again.
"Does it bother you?" I asked.
"Not if I don't touch that stuff you gave me," he replied, dreamily resentful.
"Where did you get that scar?" I asked.
"Battle of Turin," he said.
"I don't remember any Battle of Turin, Corporal Cuckoo. When was that?"
"Why, the Battle of Turin. I got this in the Pass of Suze."
"You were wounded in the Pass of Suze at the Battle of Turin, is that right? When was that?" I asked. "In 1536 or 1537. King Francois sent us up against the Marquess de Guast. The enemy was holding the pass, but we broke through. That was my first smell of gunpowder."
"You were there of course, Corporal Cuckoo?"
"Sure I was there. But I wasn't a corporal then, and my name was not Cuckoo. They called me Lecocu. My real name was Lecoq. I came from Yvetot. I used to work for a man who made linen—Nicolas, the—"
Two or three minutes passed, while the corporal told me what he thought of Nicolas. Then, having come down curse by curse out of a red cloud of passion, he continued: "... To cut it short, Denise ran off, and all the kids in the town were singing:
Lecoq, lecoq, lecoq,
Lecoq, lecoq, lecocu.
I got the hell out of it and joined the army.... I'm not giving you anything you can make anything of, see? This is the layout, see? . . . Okay. I was about thirty, then, and in pretty good shape. Well, so when King Francois sent us to Turin—Monsieur de Montagan was Colonel-General of Infantry—my Commander, Captain Le Rat, led us up a hill to a position, and we sure had a hot five minutes! It was anybody's battle until the rest cut through, and then we advanced, and I got this."
The Corporal touched his head. I asked, "How?"
"From a halberdier. You know what a halberd is, don't you? It's sort of heavy ax on the end of a ten-foot pole. You can split a man down to the waist with a halberd, if you know how to handle it. See? If it had landed straight well, I guess I wouldn't be here right now. But I saw it coming, see, and I ducked, and just as I ducked my foot slipped in some blood, and I fell sideways. But all the same that halberdier got me. Right here, just where the scar is. See? Then everything went sort of black-and-white, and black, and I passed out. But I wasn't dead, see? I woke up, and there was the army doctor, with a cheap steel breast-plate on—no helmet—soaked with blood up to the elbows. Our blood, you can bet your life—you know what medical officers are?"
I said soothingly, "Oh yes, I know, I know. And this, you say, was in 1537?"
"Maybe 1536, I don't remember exactly. As I was saying, I woke up, and I saw the doctor, and he was talking to some other doctor that I couldn't see; and all around men were shouting their heads off—asking their friends to cut their throats and put them out of their misery ... asking for priests ... I thought I was in hell. My head was split wide open, and I could feel a sort of draft playing through my brains, and everything was going bump-bump, bumpety-bump, bump-bump-bump. But although I couldn't move or speak I could see and hear what was going on. The doctor looked at me and said ..."
Corporal Cuckoo paused. "He said?" I asked, gently.
"Well," said Corporal Cuckoo, with scorn, "you don't even know the meaning of what you were reading in your little book—Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez, and all that—even when it's put down in cold print. I'll put it so that you'll understand. The doctor said something like this: `Come here and look, sir, come and see! This fellow's brains were bursting out of his head. If I had applied Theriac, he would be buried and forgotten by now. Instead, having no Theriac, for want of something better, I applied my Digestive. And see what has happened. His eyes have opened! Observe, also that the bones are creeping together and over this beating brain a sort of skin is forming. My treatment must be right, because God is healing him!' Then the one I couldn't see said something like: `Don't be a fool, Ambroise. You're wasting your time and your medicine on a corpse.' Well, the doctor looked down at me, and touched my eyes with the ends of his fingers—like this—and I blinked. But the one I couldn't see said: `Must you waste time and medicine on the dead?'
"After I blinked my eyes, I couldn't open them again. I couldn't see. But I could still hear, and when I heard that, I was as scared as hell they were going to bury me alive. And I couldn't move. But the doctor I'd seen said: `After five days this poor soldier's flesh is still sweet, and, weary as I am, I have my wits about me, and I swear to you that I saw his eyes open.' Then he called out: 'Jehan! Bring the Digestive! . . . By your leave, sir, I will keep this man until he comes back to life, or begins to stink.
And into this wound I am going to pour some more of my Digestive.'
"Then I felt something running into my head. It hurt like hell. It was like ice water dripped into your brains. I thought This is it!—and then I went numb all over, and then I went dead again, until I woke up later in another place. The young doctor was there, without his armor this time, but he had a sort of soft hat on. This time I could move and talk, and I asked for something to drink. When he heard me talk, the doctor opened his mouth to let out a shout, but stopped himself, and gave me some wine out of a cup. But his hands were shaking so that I got more wine in my beard than in my mouth. I used to wear a beard in those days, just like you—only a bigger one, all over my face. I heard somebody come running from the other end of the room. I saw a boy—maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. This kid opened his mouth and started to say something, but the doctor got him by the throat and said . . . put it like this: `For your life, Jehan, be quiet!'
"The kid said: `Master! You have brought him back from the dead!'
"Then the doctor said: `Silence, for your life, or do you want to smell burning faggots?'
"Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke up I was in a little room with all the windows shut and a big fire burning so that it was hotter than hell. The doctor was there, and his name was Ambroise Pare. Maybe you have read about Ambroise Pare?"
"Do you mean the Ambroise Pare who became an army surgeon under Anne de Montmorency in the army of Francis the First?"
Corporal Cuckoo said, "That's what I was saying, wasn't it? Francois Premier, Francis the First. De Montmorency was our Lieutenant-General, when we got mixed up with Charles V. The whole thing started between France and Italy, and that's how I came to get my head cracked when we went down the hill near Turin. I told you, didn't I?"
"Corporal Cuckoo," I said, "you have told me that you are four hundred and thirty-eight years old. You were born in 1507, and left Yvetot to join the army after your wife made a fool of you with a linen merchant named Nicolas. Your name was Lecoq, and the children called you Lecocu. You fought at the Battle of Turin, and were wounded in the Pass of Suze about 1537. Your head was cut open with a halberd, or poleax, and some of your brains came out. A surgeon named Ambroise Pare poured into the wound in your head what you called a Digestive. So you came back to life—more than four hundred years ago! Is this right?"